National security is the obvious reason. That includes the ability to switch to a wartime economy, which requires low-tech manufacturing and resource extraction to not be reliant (and thus vulnerable) on imports from potential adversaries. Maintaining a talent pipeline is also important, we’re not going to be able to produce enough high skill machinists quickly enough when we need them because that takes time.

Manufacturing capital is primarily the value of onshoring manufacturing, the labor itself may not be particularly valuable at present, but the ability to repurpose it quickly is valuable. It would take the US much longer to build up the kind of manufacturing infrastructure and capital required to be self-sufficient than it will take China to build up the talent infrastructure and intellectual capital required to replace the US. China has no shortage of intelligent and driven people.

Advanced manufacturing (mainly thinking of semiconductors but there are other areas) is increasing in value with AI development, and has been increasingly valuable with prior digitization. It was a mistake for prior (pre-CHIPS) US administrations to not subsidize it.

There are other good reasons: not everyone in society can be upskilled. You need jobs for the lower and middle class that afford them decent lives. Only having high skill high education jobs and low skill low education jobs leaves people in the middle with limited opportunities for economic mobility.

> The best national security is for it to be in the interest of the counter party to trade with you rather than attack you.

Sure, but if your biggest export is your country's particular flavor of monopoly money, is it actually in your counterparty's best interests to trade with you?

Why do I need to trade with you when I can just rob you blind at gunpoint? What you're describing isn't sufficient leverage because you won't have jurisdiction to control trade in the future.

> The best national security is for it to be in the interest of the counter party to trade with you rather than attack you.

This assumes that governments are rational actors. This isn't always the case.

How is that working for Taiwan?

Others have mentioned geopolitical priorities like self-sufficiency or wartime economics, but I'd like to focus on the popular-opinion side of things.

It's misguided nostalgia: People recall a time of high wages which co-occurred with certain industries/jobs and strong labor unions. [0]

They (reasonably) want that kind of high earning-power to return... but incorrectly assume (A) the same products/processes are still highly profitable/scalable and (B) that they'll somehow (re-)capture a big slice of any pie without (re-)unionizing.

[0] https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-help-reduce-dispariti...

> Out of all the many industries out there, I don't understand why we keep glorifying and romanticizing manufacturing and trying to "bring it back."

It’s a matter of national security. Look what happened during Covid when we couldn’t produce basic medical necessities at scale.

If you go to war, do you think your adversaries are going to supply you with tanks and medicine?

That is a very good reason for trade barriers, much better than the trade deficit. And the barriers could be introduced in a far less disruptive manner, that allows companies to plan long-term. So I guess whoever stresses the US trade deficit, does not really care about national security, otherwise they would say so directly.

I think it's because if you tour through the US, you'll come across hundreds of cities that are completly abandoned and rotting that all used to manufacture items. It's hard not to wonder what happened. Instead of working at those hard but well-paying jobs, those people get to work at walmart for minimum wage.

But how many would still be around without the outsourcing? It's a convenient thing for the politicians to blame but the reality is that most jobs have been lost to machines, not overseas.

Because self-sufficiency is a prerequisite of control. “Things” are as essential as food or drinking water or energy in our modern world. Imagine if your country was reliant on another nation for all your food and water: they would have total control over you.

Modern manufacturing is not like the factories of old. Go to China and tour some modern factories: you’ll be surprised. It doesn’t pay well _in the US, in 2025_ because it’s a dying industry. They could easily rise: manufacturing wages are a tiny cost of the sticker price of anything you buy today. Wages have been rising significantly in China for years with little impact to overall product costs. But that’s because they have a competitive manufacturing industry; no US factory owner is going to invest in top talent for a dying factory that has been uncompetitive for a decade.

China wouldn't be the number 2 economy and massively increasing in global power, military, and technology if domestic manufacturing wasn't valuable and important. The US itself wouldn't have risen to preeminent global power and technology center if not for post-WW2 being worlds manufacturer and supplier.

Beyond national security or nostalgia, there's also simply the issue of skill and expertise. Factories are full of people actually working the tools, materials and processes. This is where generational experience forms— people learn a lot when they're actually hands-on. Tim Cook famously said they don't manufacture in China because of the low labour cost, but the quantity of skill (specifically, in the case of Apple, with advanced tooling and materials) [1].

This skill becomes innovation, quality, etc. and before you know it you're not inventing and designing devices for other people to build. You're buying devices designed, invented and built somewhere else.

I would also note that admiring and romanticizing capital over labour IMO is common in the USA than in other countries. I'd guess it's because the rest of the world saw some level of marxist influence that led to the formation of still-existing labour parties in the least, while the USA prosecuted marxism pretty strongly. Beyond how effective this marxist wave actually was in achieving better conditions for laborers, I'd say it at least did generally lead to ideological effects.

The general ideas that there's dignity in all work, that any job should pay a living wage, that money isn't the end all, that laborers deserve recognition, etc— I've noticed all those to be more prevalent outside the USA. Admiring people who make a lot of money with little work, or not working and living off rents, or wealth irrespective of the means to achieve it, etc— I've noticed that moreso in the USA.

So overall, you're right— I'm sure a lot of people in the USA wont actually want those jobs with how little protections labour has and how much people admire earning good money with little effort. Though nonetheless, I also believe there's a sector of the population —perhaps not in HN— that would appreciate those jobs.

[1]: https://observer.com/2025/04/apple-tim-cook-china-strategy/

I see it as a kind of misdirection, whether accidental or deliberate: Make the average person blame their malaise on the blend of industries, rather than their lack of bargaining power in the ones that exist.

Like all the nonsense about "bringing back coal" when the number of people working in it has been declining for a solid century for good reasons.

"If only we bring back buggy-whips, I'll be able to support a family like my pappy did."

Because manufacturing means widgets which has physical properties and dummies equate widgets with $$$. Software and services are too abstract and high falootin' and scary.